{"id":5767,"date":"2009-01-04T12:17:06","date_gmt":"2009-01-04T16:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/?p=5767"},"modified":"2009-01-04T12:27:36","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T16:27:36","slug":"resolution-take-the-bitch-out-of-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/2009\/01\/04\/resolution-take-the-bitch-out-of-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Resolution: Take the Bitch out of Criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to try to be nicer to people who like movies I hate. For some reason I’m not bothered if someone hates movies I love, but when someone loves movies I think are bullshit I fly into attack mode. I guess I consider being critical of someone for not liking a movie you like to be pushing an ideology on someone, while being critical of someone for liking a movie is … puncturing an illusion? Or maybe I’m just a jerk. I don’t know. At any rate, I apologize to those who have felt attacked by me and vow to (try to) disagree more elegantly. Though a recent trail of comments on my Facebook status indicates my struggle:<\/p>\n

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Cynthia hated slumdog millionaire, what is wrong with you people.<\/span> 12:23am<\/span> – <\/span>10 Comments<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
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<\/a>Aaron Dobbs<\/strong> at 1:12am January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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You hate a lot of good movies. Your hating this one isn’t particularly surprising. \ud83d\ude42<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>Cynthia Rockwell <\/strong>at 9:20am January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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and you like a lot of crap, so likewise. \ud83d\ude09<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>Cynthia Rockwell<\/strong> at 1:06pm January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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i will add:
\n-great music
\n-possibly cutest kids i have ever seen
\n-the outhouse scene is worth the price of admission alone<\/p>\n

but that’s about it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/a><\/a>RT<\/strong> at 1:10pm January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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is there a short answer to why you hated it? was gonna go see it today? Too Sappy? Manipulative? Etc?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>Cynthia Rockwell<\/strong> at 1:28pm January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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it may not be hollywood but it’s the height of hollywood melodrama, manipulative and obvious and big and bombastic. i scoffed through the entire thing. except the outhouse scene.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>RT<\/strong> at 2:10pm January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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seen this? I don’t know much about this org, but their picks & categories seem very lame..what are they thinking? http:\/\/awfj.org\/eda-awards<\/span>\/2008-eda-award-winners\/<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>TE<\/strong> at 7:55pm January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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oh, lighten up. it was entertaining and visually grand. i pay good money to be manipulated!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>TE<\/strong> at 7:56pm January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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and yes the kids were adorable, makes me want to bring home a little slumdog.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>Cynthia Rockwell<\/strong> at 9:24pm January 3<\/span><\/div>\n
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“what will we live on?” “LOVE.” vomit! he is a shellshocked zombie and she’s a gorgeous party girl, they will break up a week later.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>MP <\/strong>at 4:29am January 4<\/span><\/div>\n
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i’m with you, cynthia — it was cliched, poorly acted, full of holes, and shamelessly unimaginative. if we pay for manipulation let it at least be good manipulation.<\/p>\n

but at least it was fast with lots of music and shiny colors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Facebook status updates get most of my film criticism these days. I also posted a link to this article<\/a>, with which I fully agree, but which also does the kind of criticism I tend to do but want to move away from: criticizing the critics rather than the film:<\/div>\n
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A quick scan through the critical reactions on a review aggregator like Metacritic<\/a> or Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> reveals a fountain of excessive praise, as if, with the year’s end approaching and the award-movie field looking paltry and weak, many critics found themselves in possession of use-it-or-lose-it superlatives and decided that Slumdog <\/em>was their only chance to get rid of them.<\/div>\n
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But on the fundamentals of the film itself, I fully agree with him:<\/div>\n
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Slumdog<\/em> isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s sappy, suspense-free, and packed with one-note characters, including a female lead who’s more object than person. In terms of violence, it’s grittier than most similar pictures, but mostly in a desperately “edgy” way that seems designed to gloss over its blatant sentimentality. The best you can say about it is that it’s stylish schmaltz.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to try to be nicer to people who like movies I hate. For some reason I’m not bothered if someone hates movies I love, but when someone loves movies I think are bullshit I fly into attack mode. I guess I consider being critical of someone for not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58QoK-1v1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ceerock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}